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There is no 'Planet B'

By: Gernot Laganda

The eyes of the world are on the UN Secretary General's Climate Summit in New York. Over 120 heads of state are roaming the halls of
the UN building, telling the world about their perspectives, actions and
intentions on climate change. Although some key players are missing, such as
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, most
commentators have good things to say about this Summit. The strategy of the UN
Secretary General to request 'bold and decisive action' has clearly left a mark
- the announcements countries have made at this Summit to date have mostly been
substantive (overview).

In the past, most speeches at this kind of event were
simply acknowledging climate change as a defining problem of the 21st Century
and inferring that some urgent action is needed. This approach may have helped
countries to delay several complex and uncomfortable reforms, such as the
phasing-out of fossil fuel subsidies or the taxing of carbon pollution, but it
has also led to a huge aggregate delay on concrete global climate action. The
inconvenient truth about greenhouse gas emissions, however, is that they
do not stop at national boundaries. As more extreme weather events are being
recorded in all parts of the world, more and more alarm bells from climate
scientists (IPCC AR5), think tanks (WRI's The Climate Change Connection to U.S. Public Health) and civil society
groups are starting to ring. The climate march in New York City last Saturday
is a good example: Over 400,000 people took to the streets, many with signs
saying ‘There is no Planet B’.

At this week's UN Climate Summit, one cannot help but
notice that the tone of some of the country statements has changed. Many
countries have had an opportunity to reflect on their own experiences with
climate disasters, from floods to droughts to wildfires and tropical storms. US
President Obama referred to many recent examples in his statement, concluding
that 'we are the first generation who is experiencing the impacts of climate
change, and also the last generation that can do anything about it'. This
got amplified by other prominent commentators who shared their frustration
about the fact that green technologies are ready to go to scale at affordable
prices, but there is still too little political drive and inertia in the status
quo to make transformational progress.

For an organisation such as IFAD, which is championing
the cause of smallholder adaptation at this Summit, this
event has confirmed that we are among the fastest and most decisive movers on
climate action. IFAD’s flagship programme for climate change adaptation is
only two years young, but keeps getting recognized by donors and agriculture
ministers from around the world as one of the most tangible examples of climate
action. In 2015, at the 21st Conference of Parties of the UN Climate
Change Convention, we hope to realize that our efforts in the field of
climate change adaptation are met by equally decisive actions on emission
reductions.